Jane Ponsford is an artist and papermaker based in London and the South East of England. She works using repetitive processes, constructing sculptural forms made up of hundreds of near identical fragments to make bookworks, sculpture and installations.
Although in the past she used a variety of materials, since then she has mainly concentrated on working with handmade paper and and cast linen and cotton pulps.
‘I enjoy using this material because it brings together surface and form. It is evocative, reminiscent of documentation and archives. Staining and tearing easily, it can be seen as the receptive surface for forensic investigation or a blank form to catch light or shadow. Much of my work outside involves papermaking. I love the contradictory nature of working with a fragile, ephemeral material in difficult, dirty surroundings at the mercy of the weather.
My current preoccupation is with materiality and process in response to place. I am interested in working with the materials of particular settings and landscapes, the chalk and clay and silt and the traces that they leave. Working in response to specific places has become increasingly important to me; and all my work; whether employing papermaking or not, involves getting traces from particular spaces or landscapes. These traces have included in previous projects, earth, volcanic ash deposits, water from the Medway, impressions and castings, photographs and stories. While craft processes are integral to the development of my work and inform the final outcome, the starting point of the work is often based on collections of dust and materials connected with specific locations.’
In 2007 she was awarded an Arts Council England grant for a twelve- month project developing and making work in relation to landscape.
Her work can be found via The Sarah Myerscough Gallery, Make Hauser & Wirth, The New Craftsmen and Gallery 57. During 2023 - 2024 she is engaged on a collaborative research project with ceramicist, Kim Norton and poet, Laura Wainwright. The resulting exhibition will be shown at Oriel Myrddin in Carmarthen in Wales.
Key words to describe her approach: respond, trace, collect, accumulate, mark
